David Dayen • The Progressive Populist • April 1, 2014
Want to end recessions, reduce inequality, prevent fraud and help immigrants? It’s time to install postal banking
Ever since the inspector general of the US Postal Service authored a white paper endorsing the concept of postal banking, more advocates and policymakers have become intrigued. Postal banking is actually an old idea: Dozens of countries offer simple financial services through their posts, and here in America, Postal Savings Accounts served millions of customers from 1911-1967 (the post office still sells money orders today). But it could also fix a number of our current problems simultaneously, even ones you haven’t thought about. Here are 10 different applications of postal banking, in order from most to least obvious:
- Financial inclusion for low-income Americans
- Reducing inequality and boosting the economy
- Stabilizing the Postal Service
- A better way to deliver federal benefits
- A savings vehicle for the poor
- Bringing immigrants into society
- Preventing identity fraud
- Modernizing the payment system
- Safeguarding personal data
- Ending recessions
Read the entire article here.
Filed under: Uncategorized |
Public Banking 
Actually Postal Banking is Wall Street’s next plan to end a perfectly healthy public agency! Just as Wall Street took the Federal Housing Agency with Freddie and Fannie and blew it up with fraud and corruption because it wanted the Fed out of the mortgage market, and just as Wall Street blew up the Student loan market because it wanted to make all the student loans…..Wall Street now wants the Post Office to go so private industry will control all communications. How better than to bring Post Offices into the financial fold and blow it up with fraud and corruption! Indeed, the Post Office is a perfectly healthy business that simply needs to be protected from a Bains Capital model of attack—-gutting a corporation of all its assets and send it to bankruptcy where all public worker contracts and debts are lost. That is the goal of this Post Office as bank.
Remember, credit unions were created to do just what this post office proposal suggests post office’s should do. Credit Unions need to go back to being the community source it was meant to be. Rather, neo-liberals passed laws allowing credit unions to become just like banks….predatory and profit-driven. See the progression?
Keep Post Offices independent and strong and bring credit unions back to being what they were meant to be—-